BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – The Board of Regents, the state's top higher education panel, is hoping to entice thousands of Louisiana college graduates who left the state to return home and fill what is expected to be a wave of new high-technology jobs.

The initiative, called Operation Recall, will target more than 40,000 people, many of whom have degrees in computer science and engineering.

The effort is part of an overall push by the regents and a number of other state agencies who are predicting the state's job market to grow significantly faster than the national job market over the next year and several years into the future.

The Advocate reports Operation Recall will be a partnership with information-gathering USADATA company to identify graduates who could be persuaded to return to Louisiana.